WoD Death Knight Changes

[Skarssen]

What's wrong with that? They changed stances to something they hope most players will agree with, and that players who don't agree with that change (which should be a minority) don't care about it.
He's talking to one of the (comparatively) few players who don't support this change, not one of the players this change is targeted at.

Apparently you have very little experience with warriors or those who play them at a high level.

The stance dancing change, from all available sources in lieu of an actual player pool with normal distribution, has been overwhelmingly canned by players, and actually is against Blizzard's stated goal of "meaningful decisions". Stances currently have a meaningful impact on performance; there are specific instances where being in a particular stance is beneficial. In contrast tying ability availability to stances does absolutely nothing to gameplay except introduce more macros. This is the whole reason stance dancing was removed in the first place; it requires macros and unfairly punishes those with higher latency. Nothing more irritating that having that polymorph land because you couldn't get your spell reflect macro to activate fast enough. I haven't seen a single player provide a convincing argument on why ability stance dancing is a good thing. The ability to write functional macros, most of which require you to visit a website (and which is definitely something Blizzard has been trying to distance itself from) isn't skill, and neither is living in a location where you get sub 50ms latency at all times.

I get that they want to stances to feel different and be meaningful, but the current version of stances does that far better than what they are doing in Beta. It is the fact that the implementation of stances is doing exactly the opposite of what they intend that gets me. This isn't a situation where they don't like the feel of a spec (i.e fury) and want it to feel more "furious". It is a situation where they are trying to implement a change that in reality does exactly the opposite of their intentions, and that they are completely disregarding all the feedback telling them so because, "trust us, you will like this change".

[valliant13]

Although not relevant to DK's, if you haven't seen this https://twitter.com/Celestalon/statu...25787388497920, you should. Great demonstration of what those of you still hoping for changes are up against.

He did the same thing with Demo Locks. While yes warlocks have been absurdly overpowered as a whole the entire expansion, Demo is in a pretty bad spot with what looks like no hope to get out of. They posed legitimate questions on twitter and got the same types of response. I knew when GC left it was going to get bad, I just didn't think it would get this bad.

[Deleted]

This is the whole reason stance dancing was removed in the first place; it requires macros and unfairly punishes those with higher latency. Nothing more irritating that having that polymorph land because you couldn't get your spell reflect macro to activate fast enough.

If I understand the patch notes correctly, this is not true. Using spell reflect automatically puts you in defensive stance, so no macro involved.
However, this change makes sitting in def stance in pvp more punishing, which actually is a good thing.
But this is getting a bit off topic, this thread is about dks, not warriors.

[Skarssen]

If I understand the patch notes correctly, this is not true. Using spell reflect automatically puts you in defensive stance, so no macro involved.
However, this change makes sitting in def stance in pvp more punishing, which actually is a good thing.
But this is getting a bit off topic, this thread is about dks, not warriors.

You are correct; stances will automatically swap with ability use (I missed that).

However, that makes the situation worse because now you can't chose to use stances for ANY BENEFIT AT ALL. It completely removes choice and
strategic game play (unless you consider standing there not attacking anything to be meaningful). Really what is the benefit to this other than to the roleplaying crowd?

And yes while this is all about warriors, it should mean something to DK's because these developers are using the same sort of boneheaded strategy for DK's too.

[Deleted]

You are correct; stances will automatically swap with ability use (I missed that).

However, that makes the situation worse because now you can't chose to use stances for ANY BENEFIT AT ALL. It completely removes choice and
strategic game play (unless you consider standing there not attacking anything to be meaningful). Really what is the benefit to this other than to the roleplaying crowd?

And yes while this is all about warriors, it should mean something to DK's because these developers are using the same sort of boneheaded strategy for DK's too.

Isn't that exactly what Celestalont said? You don't see the benefit, but it isn't really hurting you, either.
As a new/casual player it is now obvious which stance you should be in, you don't have to worry about stance dancing at all, because it all works automatically. As an added benefit, using defensive abilities now has a dps trade off.
Also that's the discussion about removing unneccessary complexity vs gameplay choices, which has been done enough already.
You don't agree with that change, which is perfectly fine. However, it doesn't hurt you, either, but it helps other players, so what's the problem? Not every change has to be targeted at you.

[valliant13]

Isn't that exactly what Celestalont said? You don't see the benefit, but it isn't really hurting you, either.
As a new/casual player it is now obvious which stance you should be in, you don't have to worry about stance dancing at all, because it all works automatically. As an added benefit, using defensive abilities now has a dps trade off.
Also that's the discussion about removing unneccessary complexity vs gameplay choices, which has been done enough already.
You don't agree with that change, which is perfectly fine. However, it doesn't hurt you, either, but it helps other players, so what's the problem? Not every change has to be targeted at you.

The thing to me that is a problem with "automating" stances. It takes away a skill cap for warriors. Back when beserker rage could only be used in beserker stance as well as intercept and shield slam could only be used in defensive stance etc the skill cap in pvp was good warriors knew when to be in what stances. No it automates it for them...so what's the point of even having stances to begin with...Same argument could be made for us DKs and personally I am starting to feel that way as well, especially with them getting rid of Dark Command for DPS specs after they gave it back. At this point the whole game is becoming dumbed down to a ridiculous amount. The fact that without any talents Arms rotation is Colossas Smash, Mortal Strike, Execute, Auto Attack and Whirlwind as a filler says enough, especially considering CS and MS have cooldowns. The choice of what stance you are in has been part of the warrior niche since it's inception and if they are just going to automate it then it should just be removed.

On a positive side of it the "automation"....it's going to discourage pvping in a tank stance and that's something I am hoping will be addressed to DK's sitting in blood presence too. However this just ties back into what I just said, and that they should just remove stances altogether. Increase our defensive capability naturally, but not as much as sitting in BP/DS would give and call it a wash.

The bigger problem is Celestalon saying it's basically a pointless change, but not a negative one. Just simply because they want to change it. I've always worked with the phrase, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Warriors weren't broken before and they've completely screwed up that class right now mechanically. Sure they could have used QoL fixes, however they have been a great example of what a class with good scaling can do throughout an expansion. As for how that relates to us, they haven't touched our dps specs and it looks as if we won't see any change because they think the dps specs are fine. Time will tell if they have to buff us again every tier(which is likely going to happen). I just don't want the most significant class buffs for either spec to still be behind the curve by a lot like frost from 5.3 to 5.4.

[Sarkol]

True. But Frost seems to be in a great spot. At the top of the clearly not broken classes. Unholy seems to be struggling. Of course this doesnt account for differences in player performance. The unholy DK could have been staring blankly at his screen half the time for all we know while fighting with his gf on the phone. Plus tuning will undoubtedly throw everything around

Tuning hasn't happened yet, at all. Mage is the outlier, but Frost Dk could also be high. Some classes are very low also. This is one problem which needs to wait until near the end of beta to be clarified. At least until they specifically start the real tuning phase.

[Deleted]

The bigger problem is Celestalon saying it's basically a pointless change, but not a negative one. Just simply because they want to change it.

This is completely wrong.
1) Celestalon didn't say it's a pointless change, he said it's a change that hopefully doesn't bother those players who don't agree with the change.
2) The change is not because they want to change it for the sake of change, but to improve (by simplifying) gameplay for new/casual players.

A lot of changes with WoD are targeted towards new and casual players, and stating things like "they don't listen to us", "they don't know how this game works" and "they are just dumbing things down" is ONLY because you are already an very experienced or even hardcore player. But you have to understand that hardcore players are a minority, so making changes that are positive for the majority of new and casual players by simplifying a few things is not a decision they made because they felt like pissing you off, but because they expect to get more new subscriptions out of it. Apparently this is the direction they are planning to with the game, and you probably won't change their mind, so you should accept that.
In my opinion they overdid the simplification on the tooltips and passive removal, and I hope they change their mind on that, but their general decision of making the game simpler is pretty much set in stone. And this is not Celestalons decision, so calling him incompetent or blaming him for the direction they are taking with the game is simply stupid.

And after all, they're not removing everything challenging from the game. Mythic raids, RBGs and similar challenging parts of the game are here to stay. There is still enough depth to the rotation of most classes, and there will still be enough to learn in order to master your class beyond what guides tell you.

tl;dr: Most of the massive changes you dislike aren't targeted towards you, so get over it. Complain about little things, maybe the devs will listen to you, but if you try to change the direction they are going you will fail miserably.

[Huckfealing]

Tuning hasn't happened yet, at all. Mage is the outlier, but Frost Dk could also be high. Some classes are very low also. This is one problem which needs to wait until near the end of beta to be clarified. At least until they specifically start the real tuning phase.

That is until the total lack of secondary stats synergy kicks in and we begin to fall down the rankings every patch until we are back in the Sam spot we are now.

[valliant13]

This is completely wrong.
1) Celestalon didn't say it's a pointless change, he said it's a change that hopefully doesn't bother those players who don't agree with the change.
2) The change is not because they want to change it for the sake of change, but to improve (by simplifying) gameplay for new/casual players.

A lot of changes with WoD are targeted towards new and casual players, and stating things like "they don't listen to us", "they don't know how this game works" and "they are just dumbing things down" is ONLY because you are already an very experienced or even hardcore player. But you have to understand that hardcore players are a minority, so making changes that are positive for the majority of new and casual players by simplifying a few things is not a decision they made because they felt like pissing you off, but because they expect to get more new subscriptions out of it. Apparently this is the direction they are planning to with the game, and you probably won't change their mind, so you should accept that.
In my opinion they overdid the simplification on the tooltips and passive removal, and I hope they change their mind on that, but their general decision of making the game simpler is pretty much set in stone. And this is not Celestalons decision, so calling him incompetent or blaming him for the direction they are taking with the game is simply stupid.

And after all, they're not removing everything challenging from the game. Mythic raids, RBGs and similar challenging parts of the game are here to stay. There is still enough depth to the rotation of most classes, and there will still be enough to learn in order to master your class beyond what guides tell you.

tl;dr: Most of the massive changes you dislike aren't targeted towards you, so get over it. Complain about little things, maybe the devs will listen to you, but if you try to change the direction they are going you will fail miserably.

The game is simple enough, their excuse that it has become too convoluted is absolute nonsense. They think that it's too complicated and that's why subs are dropping and it isnt the case. I agree with some of their "simplifying" things, this automation is stupid, they need to get rid of stances if they are going to automate them. As far as your final sentence, I know they aren't changing things to target me, but their changes effect me. I've never seen an mmo dev so focused on their mission on how they want things to work that they don't even listen to the people playing the game. Yes a lot of them play wow too, but at the very least other developers actually listen and take feedback seriously...Blizzard is trying to push what they want out of their game, which is absolutely fine they are entitled to do it, however they will get a complete smack upside the head when more subs drop during warlords due to how they are pushing their agenda without any thought of who it might affect. That who is the people who have been loyal to the game since whenever. All I hear from them nowadays is how they want new players....it's already the most successful mmo of all time...why not show some homage to the people who have been loyal to their game. Instead it seems they are completely uninterested in people currently playing with a lot of their responses simply because they want to push their agenda of making this game even more accessible than it already was from the start and has progressive gotten more and more accessible since then. At some point something is going to give, and if they don't want to then they won't have as much income from this game as a result.

[Skarssen]

Not sure how anyone can say that Blizzard is making the game easier for new players when they are simultaneously removing information about how certain abilities function from tooltips.

[Faenlyn]

He did the same thing with Demo Locks. While yes warlocks have been absurdly overpowered as a whole the entire expansion, Demo is in a pretty bad spot with what looks like no hope to get out of. They posed legitimate questions on twitter and got the same types of response. I knew when GC left it was going to get bad, I just didn't think it would get this bad.

You're exactly the kind of guy who can't seem to understand the Devs explaining the forest to you because you can't look past the trees. Celestalon explained that very point in 3 different ways but guys who are obtuse will remain obtuse. How many times can he explain. It's not that Demo is underpowered. It's that Destro and Afflic are overpowered. Any players who cares about his performance in the slighthest will play the OP specs. That leaves only baddies playing Demo which leaves Demo looking bad on logs. Because AGAIN. Demo is less powerful than the OP specs but being less powerful than overpowered doesnt make you underpowered. If normal players played it which would be average spec compared to other classes. But you will be left with only baddies playing it making it look worse than it is. That's called selection bias.

The point is that the Devs understand their classes better than 90% of the peanut gallery who think they know better. When it comes to DK feedback we have been hurt by the "I know better than the Devs" philosophy so Il will contribute only negative feedback about how stupid they are which seems so prevalent here.

[Shiira]

When it comes to DK feedback we have been hurt by the "I know better than the Devs" philosophy which seems so prevalent here.

It's hard to give them any credit when we have people like celestalon telling us that death knights are fine in t16 when we clearly aren't and when blizzard clearly know it.

Or when they refuse to discuss the mathematics behind what we consider to be problems with the class, and instead just expect us to trust that they know what they're doing when very little is changing for the better.

I'm sure they know a decent amount about this game but there's no transparency, communication with the community is a pathetic joke.

This will be the third expansion in a row where I have attempted to find out if haste scaling on diseases is something they're willing to consider and it's looking like it'll be the third expansion without a response. Maybe caster dots shouldn't be able to crit, I wonder how they'd respond to that.

[valliant13]

You're exactly the kind of guy who can't seem to understand the Devs explaining the forest to you because you can't look past the trees. Celestalon explained that very point in 3 different ways but guys who are obtuse will remain obtuse. How many times can he explain. It's not that Demo is underpowered. It's that Destro and Afflic are overpowered. Any players who cares about his performance in the slighthest will play the OP specs. That leaves only baddies playing Demo which leaves Demo looking bad on logs. Because AGAIN. Demo is less powerful than the OP specs but being less powerful than overpowered doesnt make you underpowered. If normal players played it which would be average spec compared to other classes. But you will be left with only baddies playing it making it look worse than it is. That's called selection bias.

The point is that the Devs understand their classes better than 90% of the peanut gallery who think they know better. When it comes to DK feedback we have been hurt by the "I know better than the Devs" philosophy so Il will contribute only negative feedback about how stupid they are which seems so prevalent here.

My point wasn't whether or not the devs understand the classes. Demo is not an average spec at best. It is the fifth worst spec on the closest thing we have to a patchwork fight on raid bots. That's also using the 90th percentile for logs which is right about where the top guilds players are. Good players are playing demo now that they are farming content because it doesn't matter. It is severely underperforming and overall underpowered. However you don't choose to look at actual numbers and instead consider me obtuse..http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Iron_Jugg...100/14/60/p90/ in case you actually care at looking at numbers. Outside of two fights it's in the bottom five or six specs at the 90th percentile(the great players). So think what you want, but numbers and data don't lie.

[Shiira]

That's a top hundred link. If you look at all parses demo is middle of the pack. It's within half a percent of unholy with a fifth of the representation, is unholy severely underperforming?

I'm not disagreeing with you but the numbers on juggernaut do not support your argument.

[valliant13]

That's a top hundred link. If you look at all parses demo is middle of the pack. It's within half a percent of unholy with a fifth of the representation, is unholy severely underperforming?

I'm not disagreeing with you but the numbers on juggernaut do not support your argument.

Fair enough. Looking through on all parses demo isn't in an absolutely terrible spot, but top 100 it's pretty lackluster. And to me that is a little more important because it takes what the best players can do with the spec.

[Sinzaram]

To quote a certain someones twitter.

Stop. Using. Raidbots. To. Make. Claims. About. Numbers.

1) Raidbots only uses World of Logs to parse logs.
2) World of Logs has been a tiny bit broken and abandoned for the last two tiers.
3) World of Logs can't tell the difference between heroics and normal modes often.
4) Top logs often have raid groups deliberately giving cd buffs to certain members to get high numbers.

This is all why we don't use Raidbots people.....

[Shiira]

It doesn't show what the best players can do with demonology because there aren't enough parses.

There are 2473 affliction parses and 157 demonology parses on iron juggernaut. What you're seeing with the top hundred results are the top 4% of the affliction parses and the top 64% of the demonology parses.

This is a problem, the results are not comparable and should not be used to make a point. And it's only part of the problem, top hundred shouldn't be used at the best of times because it isn't meaningful data.

[Faenlyn]

My point wasn't whether or not the devs understand the classes. Demo is not an average spec at best. It is the fifth worst spec on the closest thing we have to a patchwork fight on raid bots. That's also using the 90th percentile for logs which is right about where the top guilds players are. Good players are playing demo now that they are farming content because it doesn't matter. It is severely underperforming and overall underpowered. However you don't choose to look at actual numbers and instead consider me obtuse..http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/Iron_Jugg...100/14/60/p90/ in case you actually care at looking at numbers. Outside of two fights it's in the bottom five or six specs at the 90th percentile(the great players). So think what you want, but numbers and data don't lie.

I just explained selection bias to you and why raid bots would have Demo performing terribly, and you quote raidbots to try and prove your point? let me explain again. its low because all the good players are not playing Demo. If all the good players are not playing Demo, it might be the best spec in the world, its going to be low in logs. Do you get it it now or not? And no the best players not playing Demo just because it's farm and it doesnt matter anymore. You basically just defined who the baddies are. Almost no one is playing a worse spec in raid contect for "flavor" unless they really dont care about their performance or dont know any better, farm content or not. The top 100 bad players are still just the top 100 of the bad players.

[Schizoide]

Warcraftlogs is much better, at this point. They have a solid sample size and properly parse later SoO fights. They also don't default to (sigh) top100.

Here's the link you should be using now:

http://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/5

Demo ranks quite high, but if you look at the sample count you'll see that is likely an anomaly.